Just a little hot chocolate

November 13, 2024

I was at the local big box store last week buying important things such as dishwashing liquid, olive oil, and mayonnaise, when I noticed an end cap highlighting a sale item. Normally I don't pay much attention to the end cap sales became usually Aldi is still cheaper per item. This time however, I realized it was a very, very good sale.

For years, we have made our own hot chocolate mix. I bought the items we needed in bulk and it was cheaper per cup of cocoa than if I were to buy a mix. This past year I was informed that the farmer who hosted the bi-yearly bulk order was no longer going to be doing so. I'm general, this would be okay. I wasn't buying nearly as much with half the numbers to feed as in earlier years, but there were going to be some items for which it was going to be challenging to find an alternative source. Bulk cocoa powder and dried milk... essential ingredients for cocoa mix... were among those items. (Hard white wheat berries are the biggest casualty. We're down to our last bucket and I'm still not sure where I'm going to be able to find them. Having to pay shipping doubles the price from what I'm used to spending.)

Anyway, back to cocoa mix. I realized it was going to be more cost effective to just buy premade mix this year. Aldi carries it, so if I bought a box a week everyone could decide when that week they would have their allotted amount. Not ideal, but better than nothing.

All this was in the back of my head when I saw the sale was $5.99 for a box of 50 packets of hot chocolate. Here's my tip for the day: If you want to save money on food, you need to have a pretty good knowledge of what your basic items cost in each store you shop at. And by cost, I mean price per each (item, pound, ounce, etc.) This is the only way you can know for sure if a sale is a good deal. (Big box stores tend to look as though they have good deals, but often when you actually do the math, they're not. I'm always suspicious.) But this was a fantastic deal, definitely beating the Aldi price, so two boxes went in my cart.

There was much excitement when I arrived home. I began to realize that while 100 packets seems like a lot, six children, even limited to one cup of cocoa per day, would fairly quickly decimate both boxes. I realized I had not bought enough to get through the end of the year, much less through winter. I'd be stuck paying a lot more because this kind of sale doesn't come around very often. It nagged at me.

So I'm Monday, I found myself back at the big box store (a place I try to go to at minimum once a month) for the second time in a week, and bought four more boxes.